Telemetry

As of version v0.29.0 cloud-nuke sends telemetry back to Gruntwork to help us better prioritize bug fixes and feature improvements. The following metrics are included:

• Command and Arguments
• Version Number
• Timestamps
• Resource Types
• Resource Counts
• A randomly generated Run ID
• AWS Account ID

We never collect

• IP Addresses
• Resource Names

Telemetry can be disabled entirely by setting the DISABLE_TELEMETRY environment variable on the command line.

As an open source tool, you can see the exact statistics being collected by searching the code for telemetry.TrackEvent(...)

cloud-nuke

This repo contains a CLI tool to delete all resources . cloud-nuke was created for situations when you might have an account you use for testing and need to clean up leftover resources so you're not charged for them. Also great for cleaning out accounts with redundant resources. Also great for removing unnecessary defaults like default VPCs and permissive ingress/egress rules in default security groups.

In addition, cloud-nuke offers non-destructive inspecting functionality that can either be called via the command-line interface, or consumed as library methods, for scripting purposes.

The currently supported functionality includes:

AWS

Cloud-nuke suppports 🔎 inspecting and 🔥💀 deleting the following AWS resources:

Resource Family	Resource type
EC2	Auto scaling groups
EC2	Elastic Load Balancers (v1 and v2)
EC2	EBS Volumes
EC2	Unprotected EC2 instances
EC2	AMIS
EC2	Snapshots
EC2	Elastic IPs
EC2	Launch Configurations
Certificate Manager	ACM Private CA
Direct Connect	Transit Gateways
Elasticache	Clusters
Elasticache	Parameter Groups
Elasticache	Subnet Groups
ECS	Services
ECS	Clusters
EKS	Clusters
RDS	RDS databases
RDS	Neptune
RDS	Document DB instances
DynamoDB	Tables
Lambda	Functions
SQS	Queues
S3	Buckets
VPC	Default VPCs
VPC	Default rules in the un-deletable default security group
VPC	NAT Gateways
IAM	Users
IAM	Roles (and any associated EC2 instance profiles)
IAM	Service-linked-roles
IAM	Groups
IAM	Policies
IAM	Customer-managed policies
IAM	Access analyzers
IAM	OpenID Connect providers
Secrets Manager	Secrets
CloudWatch	Dashboard
CloudWatch	Log groups
CloudWatch	Alarms
OpenSearch	Domains
KMS	Custgomer managed keys (and associated key aliases)
GuardDuty	Detectors
Macie	Member accounts
SageMaker	Notebook instances
Kinesis	Streams
API Gateway	Gateways (v1 and v2)
EFS	File systems
SNS	Topics
CloudTrail	Trails
ECR	Repositories
Config	Service recorders
Config	Service rules
Security Hub	Hubs
Security Hub	Members
Security Hub	Administrators
AWS Certificate Manager	Certificates
CodeDeploy	Applications

WARNING: The RDS APIs also interact with neptune and document db resources. Running cloud-nuke aws --resource-type rds without a config file will remove any neptune and document db resources in the account.

NOTE: AWS Backup Resource: Resources (such as AMIs) created by AWS Backup, while owned by your AWS account, are managed specifically by AWS Backup and cannot be deleted through standard APIs calls for that resource. These resources are tagged by AWS Backup and are filtered out so that cloud-nuke does not fail when trying to delete resources it cannot delete.

BEWARE!

When executed as cloud-nuke aws, this tool is HIGHLY DESTRUCTIVE and deletes all resources! This mode should never be used in a production environment!

When executed as cloud-nuke defaults-aws, this tool deletes all DEFAULT VPCs and the default ingress/egress rule for all default security groups. This should be used in production environments WITH CAUTION.

Install

Download from releases page

1. Download the latest binary for your OS on the releases page.
2. Move the binary to a folder on your PATH. E.g.: mv cloud-nuke_darwin_amd64 /usr/local/bin/cloud-nuke.
3. Add execute permissions to the binary. E.g.: chmod u+x /usr/local/bin/cloud-nuke.
4. Test it installed correctly: cloud-nuke --help.

Install via package manager

Note that package managers are third party. The third party cloud-nuke packages may not be updated with the latest version, but are often close. Please check your version against the latest available on the releases page. If you want the latest version, the recommended installation option is to download from the releases page.

• macOS: You can install cloud-nuke using Homebrew: brew install cloud-nuke.

• Linux: Most Linux users can use Homebrew: brew install cloud-nuke.

Usage

Simply running cloud-nuke aws will start the process of cleaning up your cloud account. You'll be shown a list of resources that'll be deleted as well as a prompt to confirm before any deletion actually takes place.

In AWS, to delete only the default resources, run cloud-nuke defaults-aws. This will remove the default VPCs in each region, and will also revoke the ingress and egress rules associated with the default security group in each VPC. Note that the default security group itself is unable to be deleted.

Nuke or inspect resources using AWS Profile

When using cloud-nuke aws, or cloud-nuke inspect-aws, you can pass in the AWS_PROFILE env variable to target resources in certain regions for a specific AWS account. For example the following command will nuke resources only in ap-south-1 and ap-south-2 regions in the gruntwork-dev AWS account:

AWS_PROFILE=gruntwork-dev cloud-nuke aws --region ap-south-1 --region ap-south-2

Similarly, the following command will inspect resources only in us-east-1

AWS_PROFILE=gruntwork-dev cloud-nuke inspect-aws --region us-east-1

Nuke or inspect resources in certain regions

When using cloud-nuke aws, or cloud-nuke inspect-aws, you can use the --region flag to target resources in certain regions. For example the following command will nuke resources only in ap-south-1 and ap-south-2 regions:

cloud-nuke aws --region ap-south-1 --region ap-south-2

Similarly, the following command will inspect resources only in us-east-1

cloud-nuke inspect-aws --region us-east-1

Including regions is available within:

• cloud-nuke aws
• cloud-nuke defaults-aws
• cloud-nuke inspect-aws

Exclude resources in certain regions

When using cloud-nuke aws or cloud-nuke inspect-aws, you can use the --exclude-region flag to exclude resources in certain regions from being deleted or inspected. For example the following command does not nuke resources in ap-south-1 and ap-south-2 regions:

cloud-nuke aws --exclude-region ap-south-1 --exclude-region ap-south-2

Similarly, the following command will not inspect resources in the us-west-1 region:

cloud-nuke inspect-aws --exclude-region us-west-1

--region and --exclude-region flags cannot be specified together i.e. they are mutually exclusive.

Excluding regions is available within:

• cloud-nuke aws
• cloud-nuke defaults-aws
• cloud-nuke inspect-aws

Excluding Resources by Age

You can use the --older-than flag to only nuke resources that were created before a certain period, the possible values are all valid values for ParseDuration For example the following command nukes resources that are at least one day old:

cloud-nuke aws --older-than 24h

Excluding resources by age is available within:

• cloud-nuke aws
• cloud-nuke inspect-aws

List supported resource types

You can use the --list-resource-types flag to list resource types whose termination is currently supported:

cloud-nuke aws --list-resource-types

Listing supported resource types is available within:

• cloud-nuke aws
• cloud-nuke inspect-aws

Terminate or inspect specific resource types

If you want to target specific resource types (e.g ec2, ami, etc.) instead of all the supported resources you can do so by specifying them through the --resource-type flag:

cloud-nuke aws --resource-type ec2 --resource-type ami

will search and target only ec2 and ami resources. The specified resource type should be a valid resource type i.e. it should be present in the --list-resource-types output. Using --resource-type also speeds up search because we are searching only for specific resource types.

Similarly, the following command will inspect only ec2 instances:

cloud-nuke inspect-aws --resource-type ec2

Specifying target resource types is available within:

• cloud-nuke aws
• cloud-nuke inspect-aws

Exclude terminating specific resource types

Just like you can select which resources to terminate using --resource-type, you can select which resources to skip using --exclude-resource-type flag:

cloud-nuke aws --exclude-resource-type s3 --exclude-resource-type ec2

This will terminate all resource types other than S3 and EC2.

--resource-type and --exclude-resource-type flags cannot be specified together i.e. they are mutually exclusive.

Specifying resource types to exclude is available within:

• cloud-nuke aws
• cloud-nuke inspect-aws

Dry run mode

If you want to check what resources are going to be targeted without actually terminating them, you can use the --dry-run flag

cloud-nuke aws --resource-type ec2 --dry-run

Dry run mode is only available within:

• cloud-nuke aws

Using cloud-nuke as a library

You can import cloud-nuke into other projects and use it as a library for programmatically inspecting and counting resources.

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"time"

	"github.com/aws/aws-sdk-go/aws"
	nuke_aws "github.com/gruntwork-io/cloud-nuke/aws"
	"github.com/gruntwork-io/cloud-nuke/externalcreds"
)

func main() {
	// You can scan multiple regions at once, or just pass a single region for speed
	targetRegions := []string{"us-east-1", "us-west-1", "us-west-2"}
	excludeRegions := []string{}
	// You can simultaneously target multiple resource types as well
	resourceTypes := []string{"ec2", "vpc"}
	excludeResourceTypes := []string{}
	// excludeAfter is parsed identically to the --older-than flag
	excludeAfter := time.Now()

	// Any custom settings you want
	myCustomConfig := &aws.Config{}

	myCustomConfig.WithMaxRetries(3)
	myCustomConfig.WithLogLevel(aws.LogDebugWithRequestErrors)
	// Optionally, set custom credentials
	// myCustomConfig.WithCredentials()

	// Be sure to set your config prior to calling any library methods such as NewQuery
	externalcreds.Set(myCustomConfig)

	// NewQuery is a convenience method for configuring parameters you want to pass to your resource search
	query, err := nuke_aws.NewQuery(
		targetRegions,
		excludeRegions,
		resourceTypes,
		excludeResourceTypes,
		excludeAfter,
	)
	if err != nil {
		fmt.Println(err)
	}

	// InspectResources still returns *AwsAccountResources, but this struct has been extended with several
	// convenience methods for quickly determining if resources exist in a given region
	accountResources, err := nuke_aws.InspectResources(query)
	if err != nil {
		fmt.Println(err)
	}

	// You can call GetRegion to examine a single region's resources
	usWest1Resources := accountResources.GetRegion("us-west-1")

	// Then interrogate them with the new methods:

	// Count the number of any resource type within the region
	countOfEc2InUsWest1 := usWest1Resources.CountOfResourceType("ec2")

	fmt.Printf("countOfEc2InUsWest1: %d\n", countOfEc2InUsWest1)
	// countOfEc2InUsWest1: 2

	fmt.Printf("usWest1Resources.ResourceTypePresent(\"ec2\"):%b\n", usWest1Resources.ResourceTypePresent("ec2"))
	// usWest1Resources.ResourceTypePresent("ec2"): true

	// Get all the resource identifiers for a given resource type
	// In this example, we're only looking for ec2 instances
	resourceIds := usWest1Resources.IdentifiersForResourceType("ec2")

	fmt.Printf("resourceIds: %s", resourceIds)
	// resourceIds:  [i-0c5d16c3ef28dda24 i-09d9739e1f4d27814]
}

Config file

You can also specify which resources to terminate with more granularity via using config files. The config file is a YAML file that specifies which resources to terminate. The top level keys of the config file are the resource types, and the values are the rules for which resources to terminate.

Filtering Features

For each resource type, you can specify either include or exclude rules. Each rule can be one of the following filters mentioned below. Here is an example:

s3:
  include:
    ...
  exclude:
    ...

Names Regex Filter

Now given the following config, the s3 buckets that will be nuked are further filtered to only include ones that match any of the provided regular expressions. So a bucket named alb-app-access-logs would be deleted, but a bucket named my-s3-bucket would not.

s3:
  include:
    names_regex:
      - ^alb-.*-access-logs$
      - .*-prod-alb-.*

Similarly, you can adjust the config to delete only IAM users of a particular name by using the IAMUsers key. For example, in the following config, only IAM users that have the prefix my-test-user- in their username will be deleted.

IAMUsers:
  include:
    names_regex:
      - ^my-test-user-.*

Now consider the following contrived example:

s3:
  include:
    names_regex:
      - ^alb-.*-access-logs$
      - .*-prod-alb-.*
  exclude:
    names_regex:
      - public
      - prod

The intention is to delete all the s3 buckets that match the include rules but not the exclude rules. Filtering is commutative, meaning that you should get the same result whether you apply the include filters before or after the exclude filters.

The result of these filters applied in either order will be a set of s3 buckets that match ^alb-.*-access-logs$ as long as they do not also contain public or prod. The rule to include s3 buckets matching .*-prod-alb-.* is negated by the rule to exclude those matching prod.

Time Filter

You can also filter resources by time. The following config will delete all s3 buckets that were created after 2020-01-01T00:00:00Z.

s3:
  include:
    time_after: '2020-01-01T00:00:00Z'

Similarly, you can delete all s3 buckets that were created before 2020-01-01T00:00:00Z by using the time_before

s3:
  include:
    time_before: '2020-01-01T00:00:00Z'

Tag Filter

You can also filter resources by tags. The following config will delete all s3 buckets that have a tag with key foo

s3:
  include:
    tag: 'foo'

By default, it will use the exclusion default tag: cloud-nuke-excluded to exclude resources.

What's supported?

To find out what we options are supported in the config file today, consult this table. Resource types at the top level of the file that are supported are listed here.

resource type	config key	names_regex	time	tags
acm	ACM	✅ (Domain Name)	✅ (Created Time)	❌
acmpca	ACMPCA	❌	✅ (LastStateChange or Created Time)	❌
ami	AMI	✅ (Image Name)	✅ (Creation Time)	❌
apigateway	APIGateway	✅ (API Name)	✅ (Created Time)	❌
apigatewayv2	APIGatewayV2	✅ (API Name)	✅ (Created Time)	❌
accessanalyzer	AccessAnalyzer	✅ (Analyzer Name)	✅ (Created Time)	❌
asg	AutoScalingGroup	✅ (ASG Name)	✅ (Created Time)	❌
backup-vault	BackupVault	✅ (Backup Vault Name)	✅ (Created Time)	❌
cloudwatch-alarm	CloudWatchAlarm	✅ (Alarm Name)	✅ (AlarmConfigurationUpdated Time)	❌
cloudwatch-dashboard	CloudWatchDashboard	✅ (Dashboard Name)	✅ (LastModified Time)	❌
cloudwatch-loggroup	CloudWatchLogGroup	✅ (Log Group Name)	✅ (Creation Time)	❌
cloudtrail	CloudtrailTrail	✅ (Trail Name)	❌	❌
codedeploy-application	CodeDeployApplications	✅ (Application Name)	✅ (Creation Time)	❌
config-recorders	ConfigServiceRecorder	✅ (Recorder Name)	❌	❌
config-rules	ConfigServiceRule	✅ (Rule Name)	❌	❌
rds-cluster	DBClusters	✅ (DB Cluster Identifier )	✅ (Creation Time)	❌
rds	DBInstances	✅ (DB Name)	✅ (Creation Time)	❌
rds-subnet-group	DBSubnetGroups	✅ (DB Subnet Group Name)	❌	❌
dynamodb	DynamoDB	✅ (Table Name)	✅ (Creation Time)	❌
ebs	EBSVolume	✅ (Volume Name)	✅ (Creation Time)	❌
ec2	EC2	✅ (Instance Name)	✅ (Launch Time)	❌
ec2-dedicated-hosts	EC2DedicatedHosts	✅ (EC2 Name Tag)	✅ (Allocation Time)	❌
ec2-keypairs	EC2KeyPairs	✅ (Key Pair Name)	✅ (Creation Time)	❌
ecr	ECRRepository	✅ (Repository Name)	✅ (Creation Time)	❌
ecscluster	ECSCluster	✅ (Cluster Name)	❌	❌
ecsserv	ECSService	✅ (Service Name)	✅ (Creation Time)	❌
ekscluster	EKSCluster	✅ (Cluster Name)	✅ (Creation Time)	❌
elb	ELBv1	✅ (Load Balancer Name)	✅ (Created Time)	❌
elbv2	ELBv2	✅ (Load Balancer Name)	✅ (Created Time)	❌
efs	ElasticFileSystem	✅ (File System Name)	✅ (Creation Time)	❌
eip	ElasticIP	✅ (Elastic IP Allocation Name)	✅ (First Seen Tag Time)	❌
elasticache	Elasticache	✅ (Cluster ID & Replication Group ID)	✅ (Creation Time)	❌
elasticacheparametergroups	ElasticacheParameterGroups	✅ (Parameter Group Name)	❌	❌
elasticachesubnetgroups	ElasticacheSubnetGroups	✅ (Subnet Group Name)	❌	❌
guardduty	GuardDuty	❌	✅ (Created Time)	❌
iam-group	IAMGroups	✅ (Group Name)	✅ (Creation Time)	❌
iam-policy	IAMPolicies	✅ (Policy Name)	✅ (Creation Time)	❌
iam-role	IAMRoles	✅ (Role Name)	✅ (Creation Time)	❌
iam-service-linked-role	IAMServiceLinkedRoles	✅ (Service Linked Role Name)	✅ (Creation Time)	❌
iam	IAMUsers	✅ (User Name)	✅ (Creation Time)	❌
kmscustomerkeys	KMSCustomerKeys	✅ (Key Name)	✅ (Creation Time)	❌
kinesis-stream	KinesisStream	✅ (Stream Name)	❌	❌
lambda	LambdaFunction	✅ (Function Name)	✅ (Last Modified Time)	❌
lc	LaunchConfiguration	✅ (Launch Configuration Name)	✅ (Created Time)	❌
lt	LaunchTemplate	✅ (Launch Template Name)	✅ (Created Time)	❌
macie-member	MacieMember	❌	✅ (Creation Time)	❌
msk-cluster	MskCluster	✅ (Cluster Name)	✅ (Creation Time)	❌
nat-gateway	NatGateway	✅ (EC2 Name Tag)	✅ (Creation Time)	❌
oidcprovider	OIDCProvider	✅ (Provider URL)	✅ (Creation Time)	❌
opensearchdomain	OpenSearchDomain	✅ (Domain Name)	✅ (First Seen Tag Time)	❌
redshift	Redshift	✅ (Cluster Identifier)	✅ (Creation Time)	❌
s3	S3	✅ (Bucket Name)	✅ (Creation Time)	✅
snstopic	SNS	✅ (Topic Name)	✅ (First Seen Tag Time)	❌
sqs	SQS	✅ (Queue Name)	✅ (Creation Time)	❌
sagemaker-notebook-smni	SageMakerNotebook	✅ (Notebook Instnace Name)	✅ (Creation Time)	❌
secretsmanager	SecretsManagerSecrets	✅ (Secret Name)	✅ (Last Accessed or Creation Time)	❌
security-hub	SecurityHub	❌	✅ (Created Time)	❌
snap	Snapshots	❌	✅ (Creation Time)	❌
transit-gateway	TransitGateway	❌	✅ (Creation Time)	❌
transit-gateway-route-table	TransitGatewayRouteTable	❌	✅ (Creation Time)	❌
transit-gateway-attachment	TransitGatewaysVpcAttachment	❌	✅ (Creation Time)	❌
vpc	VPC	✅ (EC2 Name Tag)	✅ (First Seen Tag Time)	❌

How to Use

Once you created your config file, you can run a command like this to nuke resources with your config file:

cloud-nuke aws --resource-type s3 --config path/to/file.yaml

CLI options override config file options

The options provided in the command line take precedence over those provided in any config file that gets passed in. For example, say you provide --resource-type s3 in the command line, along with a config file that specifies ec2: at the top level but doesn't specify s3:. The command line argument filters the resource types to include only s3, so the rules in the config file for ec2: are ignored, and ec2 resources are not nuked. All s3 resources would be nuked.

In the same vein, say you do not provide a --resource-type option in the command line, but you do pass in a config file that only lists rules for s3:, such as cloud-nuke aws --config path/to/config.yaml. In this case all resources would be nuked, but among s3 buckets, only those matching your config file rules would be nuked.

Be careful when nuking and append the --dry-run option if you're unsure. Even without --dry-run, cloud-nuke will list resources that would undergo nuking and wait for your confirmation before carrying it out.

Log level

By default, cloud-nuke sends most output to the Debug level logger, to enhance legibility, since the results of every deletion attempt will be displayed in the report that cloud-nuke prints after each run.

However, sometimes it's helpful to see all output, such as when you're debugging something.

You can set the log level by specifying the --log-level flag as per logrus log levels:

cloud-nuke aws --log-level debug

OR

LOG_LEVEL=debug cloud-nuke aws

Default value is - info. Acceptable values are debug, info, warn, error, panic, fatal, trace as per logrus log level parser.

Nuking only default security group rules

When deleting defaults with cloud-nuke defaults-aws, use the --sg-only flag to delete only the default security group rules and not the default VPCs.

cloud-nuke defaults-aws --sg-only

Note for nuking VPCs

When nuking VPCs cloud-nuke will attempt to remove dependency resources underneath the VPC

Supported VPC sub-resources

• Internet Gateways
• Egress Only Internet Gateways
• Elastic Network Interfaces
• VPC Endpoints
• Subnets
• Route Tables
• Network ACLs
• Security Groups
• DHCP Option Sets (Will be dissociated from VPC, not deleted. Must be cleaned up separately)
• Elastic IPs (Supported as a separate resource that gets cleaned up first. If you are filtering what gets nuked, Elastic IPs may prevent VPCs from destroying.)

All other resources that get created within VPCs must be cleaned up prior to running cloud-nuke on VPC resources.

VPC resources may not be entirely cleaned up on the first run. We believe this is caused by an eventual consistency error in AWS.

If you see errors like InvalidParameterValue: Network interface is currently in use. We recommend waiting 30 minutes and trying again.

Happy Nuking!!!

Credentials

AWS

In order for the cloud-nuke CLI tool to access your AWS, you will need to provide your AWS credentials. You can use one of the standard AWS CLI credential mechanisms.

Running Tests

go test -v ./...

Contributing

cloud-nuke is an open source project, and contributions from the community are very welcome! Please check out the Contribution Guidelines and Developing cloud-nuke for instructions.

Developing cloud-nuke

Running Locally

To run cloud-nuke locally, use the go run command:

go run main.go

Running tests

Note: Many of the tests in the aws folder run against a real AWS account and will create and destroy actual resources. DO NOT hit CTRL+C while the tests are running, as this will prevent them from cleaning up properly. We are not responsible for any charges you may incur.

Before running the tests, you must configure your AWS credentials.

To run all the tests:

go test -v ./...

To run only the tests in a specific package, such as the package aws:

cd aws
go test -v

And to run a specific test, such as TestListAMIs in package aws:

cd aws
go test -v -run TestListAMIs

Use env-vars to opt-in to special tests, which are expensive to run:

# Run acmpca tests
TEST_ACMPCA_EXPENSIVE_ENABLE=1 go test -v ./...

Formatting

Every source file in this project should be formatted with go fmt.

Releasing new versions

We try to follow the release process as deifned in our Coding Methodology.

Choosing a new release tag

If the new release contains any new resources that cloud-nuke will support, mark it as a minor version bump (X in v0.X.Y) to indicate backward incompatibilities.

This is because since version v0.2.0 cloud-nuke has been configured to automatically include new resources (so you have to explicitly opt-out). This is inherently not backward compatible, because users with CI practices around cloud-nuke would be surprised by new resources that are suddenly being picked up for deletion! This surprise is more alarming for resources that are actively in use for any account, such as IAM Users.

Therefore please mark your release as backward incompatible and bump the minor version (X in v0.X.Y) when it includes support for nuking new resources, so that we provide better signals for users when we introduce a new resource.

To release a new version

Go to the Releases Page and create a new release. The CircleCI job for this repo has been configured to:

1. Automatically detect new tags.
2. Build binaries for every OS using that tag as a version number.
3. Upload the binaries to the release in GitHub.

See .circleci/config.yml for details.

License

This code is released under the MIT License. See LICENSE.txt.